Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Description

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Modello of the Moor
Acquired by the Kimbell Art Museum

This is one of the few large models by Bernini to survive. It combines the incomparable liveliness of his quickest sketches with the exact control of his most detailed marble sculptures. It was made as a prepatory study for the Fountain of the Moor in the southern end of the Piazza Navonna in Rome. Unrecognized as a Bernini, it spent part of the twentieth century as an ornament in a garden.